You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy™
Panic Attacks.
That moment when your brain short circuits, your skin gets all clammy, your breathing hurts your own chest.
It’s an internal alarm that says, man over board, abandon ship, watch out for the ice berg.
Panic Attacks!
We’ve all had a moment in time when your body hits the wall and you just snap.
You remember that time, don’t you?
You were just humming along, everything was just peachy keen, then all of a sudden, you were a fish tank shot by a bullet.
SPLASH.
Suddenly your brain was an explosion of glass and water and fish spilling all over your new carpet. The next thing you know, you are standing in 2 inches of water and flopping fish.
How did that happen?
That’s the panic attack.
Dan Harris of Good Morning America fame has been on national TV hawking his new book 10 percent happier.
He is getting lots of media attention because he is bearing his soul.
He tells us the day when he was on national TV and literally has a meltdown.
Old footage shows Harris reading a story. He is sweating and swallowing hard, like a reformed gambler around a craps table.
His eyes are darting rapidly as if each beat of his heart is pushing adrenalized fear into his skull.
He can barely get through the 1st story. He is a groom at the alter unsure of his vows.
Suddenly, unexpectedly, he tosses the entire show to a commercial.
He was the skipper of a moving boat, and for no reason, he simply let go of the wheel, stood on transom and jumped into the sea.
The producers are on auto pilot and don’t react quickly. Like that speed boat sailing forward with no captain, the broadcast is on auto pilot, and the next video of the next story rolls for a few seconds with no sound.
It’s awkward, but not overtly alarming. The producers wake up and cut to Charlie and Diane sitting there, playing off the situation pretty professionally.
While the audience had no clue, Dan Harris felt it like a dagger in the eye. The newsman was a ticking time bomb.
June 7th 2004
Harris calls it the most embarrassing day of his life.
“I had a panic attack. I didn’t know it at the time, but what happened next would change my life.”
He talks about being an adrenaline junkie, in his 20’s, all ready a network correspondent. He was over seas covering wars and when he came home and things slowed down, he says he had trouble slowing with it. It’s a news thing. Life at the speed of News, I call it.
I try and fill that void with more adrenaline. Dan Harris says he filled the void with recreational drugs which caused panic attacks.
A skeptical journalist found meditation.
“I was a huge skeptic, it was for hippies and John Tesh music lovers,” he laughs thinking back now.
“Meditation is a brain exercise. It boosts focus and rewires parts of your brain. It helps shrink grey matter where stress lives,” he says holding up a copy of his book: 10 percent happier.
CHA CHING!
Can you say panic attack talked about equals money in the bank.
With that said; here’s my two cents.
When I was a journalistic neophyte, I use to get nervous before I went on air. I don’t know if it was panic attacks, or just inexperience.
I remember my 1st time anchoring sports in Idaho Falls Idaho. It’s 1988 and the TV station is a litter box with cables and cameras.
I was so nervous, sweat was spurting out of my skin like a Roman fountain.
I remember spending 8 hours writing copy and editing high lights.
I was very excited. But I kept one eye on the clock.
Tick. Tock.
I was busy, I was excited, but I was also apprehensive. I was unsure, nervous, wondering how this was going to go.
I had never anchored before and I was concerned.
When the time came, I dove right in.
I remember being so nervous, reading the teleprompter.
I remember the floor director pointing to me, signaling I was on. I remember the big red light shining in my eyes like a train barreling down the tracks.
I remember my co-anchor slumping into her chair and relaxing for a few minutes.
I remember being afraid, physically shaking. I remember locking in, frozen, unable to look away from the teleprompter. Sports requires timing. If a guy shoots a 3 pointer, it helps if you wait for the guy to make the basket before you move on in the highlight package. But I was young and dumb and nervous and I was not going to look at that monitor, no matter what.
I guess you could call it a panic attack.
My brain was pulsing with adrenaline and fear and dark electric thought.
I just began to read and read and read.
I was locked into the teleprompter. It was white and illuminated like an angel filled with words.
It was a life raft of thought in an otherwise stormy sea.
8 hours of thought, of planning, of producing were suddenly gone, like so much steam screeching out of an angry tea-pot.
My new plan, all of one second old? Blow right through the segment. Go. Go. Go.
Do not pass go. Do not collect 200 dollars.
Get the hell out of here!
About half way through a very disjointed and rushed narration of highlights, I notice my co-anchor motioning to me to check the monitor.
Uh oh.
My rational brain kicks in.
I glance over to the monitor and I am horrified.
I see highlights of a boxing match.
What’s the problem with that you ask?
Well for the last :45 seconds I have been reading copy about baseball.
That’s right.
“And Barry Bonds swings and hits one up the middle. The cut off is missed and Bonds advances to 2nd.”
My words scream american pastime.
But the video that people at home are seeing is some obscure Mexican boxer fighting some other obscure Mexican boxer.
It is a blood bath. I think the video is from Univision. I think I remember seeing fans are throwing food and chicken into the ring.
I’m aghast!
OMG
Boxing and bloody chickens and I’m talking about Barry Bonds jacking one over the left field wall.
I should be saying “And now more cabbage is being thrown in the ring.”
When my co anchor nudged me to look up, it was too late.
The control room rolled the wrong tape. For :45 seconds, an eternity in broadcasting, I was a bumbling stumbling broadcasting fool.
The camera cut back to me and I was frozen like a deer in the headlights.
I don’t know if my head exploded like a mailbox stuffed with M-80’s, but it sure felt that way.
I was horrified, having embarrassed myself in front of an entire viewing market.
The only good news?
Idaho, Falls is market 162.
It’s a small TV market. Only a handful of people, moose and potatoes were watching.
The other good news? We were a 2nd place TV station, so chances are we had less viewers than a Greyhound Bus Station.
“Well that’s sports,” I said sweat dripping down my face like a liquid beard. “Back after this.”
And we’re out.
I think I laid my head down on my stack of scripts.
I felt like a self-conscious 8th grader who had slipped on a banana peel in front of an entire gymnasium full of hot 8th grade girls.
I was mortified.
I understand the feeling Dan Harris is talking about.
Sometimes you just have to take a deep breath and relax. And sometimes you inhale a big bug on live tv.
North Carolina 1991.
It is the heart of the summer. It’s a million degrees and humidity is thicker than Parkay margarine.
All the TV stations are gathered in front of a house along a country road. Live vans fill the front yard. It’s a big murder arrest announcement.
Every newscast begins at 6pm. Unfortunately for me, I have few facts, and the sheriff is doing one on one interviews. Even worse for me, I am with the third station who will talk to the sheriff one on one, and to make matters worse, the station knows this and still decides to take me at the top of the show and then wait with me on live TV for the sheriff to come to the microphone.
OMG
who the hell thought that was a good idea?
I have about 3o seconds of facts. Someone was murdered. It was bloody. There is a big arrest announcement.
That’s it. I’m done. I should be saying back to you Dean. But instead, the stammering and bumbling and sweating begins.
I think by the time I have said they have a big murder arrest announcement for the 9th time and I don’t know yet what that news is for the 8th time I start to panic. Time is elongating, and becoming pressurized, like I am scuba diving to three atmospheres without clearing my ears.
I am suddenly making up words. I am sweating so profusely, I need windshield wipers for my eyes.
I watch as the sheriff moves from the first station to the 2nd station.
Oh my God. How much longer?
What else can I say about this murder with no facts.
“In case you missed it 15 seconds ago, we’re here to announce a big break in the murder of …”
Why didn’t we do a gang bang, all at once. I’d be done, in the lounge sipping a Mai Tai. Instead I’m being slowly broiled on Live Tv.
I have no idea what I am saying. Beads of sweat the size of a Volkswagen is rolling down my temples.
And then, when i think it can’t get worse, it does.
I inhale, gasping for super heated North Carolina oxygen. I gulp in a much-needed breath of stagnating stink in this cauldron of oppressive humidity and then…
SCHLOOOP!
A gigantic cicada flies into my mouth and smashes into the back of my throat.
I immediately gag.
ON LIVE TV.
It’s a broadcasting car wreck and I am narrating my own demise. Badly I must say.
Bad goes to worse in a scalding pan of bacon grease.
I suddenly and stridently begin coughing.
ON LIVE TV.
Not just your quiet, I apologize, dainty cough, like you are in church cough.
I’m talking dump truck rolling at 60 mph down the street with speed bumps cough.
It’s so loud, I sense the other reporters agitation.
They cast a Who is this emphysema stricken sweaty bastard?
Go have your panic attack somewhere else rookie.
I am hacking at this point. I forget I’m on TV
TV is less important than life.
I am coughing, a sonic burst of coughing, an F-15 thrust of cough, trying to dislodge this flying cock roach the size of a bottle cap.
I am sweating and coughing and spewing and trying to expectorate an 8 legged critter from my wind pipe.
I sound like Chitty Chitty Bang Bang running on low test. I am hacking and wheezing and sweating like a toilet that won’t stop running.
Finally after 5 minutes of stalling, and bumbling and fumbling and chortling and choking on live TV, the sheriff comes to my side.
Mercifully, it ends.
The sheriff looks at me like I am a journalistic crime scene.
I am a mess. Tears and sweat and fear and panic.
II almost expect him to swab me with a DNA kit.
Instead, he just says the same thing he has said twice all ready.
I don’t care.
Talk sheriff talk.
It’s like sweet nectar to my ears.
I want to wipe the sheet of nervous, soiled perspiration from my brow. I think a cicada leg is stuck in my teeth, but I don’t move. I have done enough damage to viewers at home.
I just listen, and pray another cicada doesn’t enter an unprotected orifice.
I feel a water fall of moisture race down my back, down my arm pits down my sides.
I am saturated with perspiration and embarrassment.
People will tell me it was terrible. Some say it is the single most horrific moment they have ever witnessed. Some tell me they laughed out loud. Some tell me they buried their heads in their hands.
So panic attacks?
yeah. I guess I’ve been there done that.
I don’t know if meditation is the answer, but I certainly have learned one thing.
You can’t meditate a cicada out of your ass.
Life’s crazy™